American Express Company

listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star, then one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a tone indicating you have been placed in queue. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star, then two. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Should you require assistance during the call, please press star, then zero. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Head of Investor Relations, Mr. Kartik Ramachandran. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Daryl, and thank you all for joining today's call. As a reminder, before we begin, today's discussion contains forward-looking statements about the company's future business and financial performance. These are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements are included in today's presentation slides and in our reports on file with the SEC. The discussion today also contains non-GAAP financial measures. The comparable GAAP financial measures are included in this quarter's earnings materials, as well as the earnings materials for the prior periods we discussed. All of these are posted on our website at ir.americanexpress.com. We'll begin today with Steve Squeri, Chairman and CEO, who will start with some remarks about the company's progress and results, and then Christophe Lecayac, Chief Financial Officer will provide a more detailed review of our financial performance. After that, we'll move to a Q&A session on the results with both Steve and Christoph. With that, let me turn it over to Steve.

Thank you, Kartik. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. We had a very strong quarter with revenues up 11% year over year to a record $18.4 billion, and earnings per share up 19% to $4.14. Card member spending in the quarter accelerated to 9 percent or 8 percent on an FX-adjusted basis, with particularly strong retail spending and a bounce back in travel, and our credit performance continued to be excellent. Based on our strong performance through the first three quarters, we're raising the guidance we provided in January. We now expect full-year revenue growth of 9 to 10 percent and EPS between $15.20 and $15.50. The big news in the quarter was the launch of our Refresh US Consumer and Business Platinum Cards, which reinforces our leadership in the premium space. I'm very pleased to say that the initial customer demand and engagement are exceeding our expectations. In fact, while it's still early, this is the strongest start we've seen for a US Platinum Card Refresh. Before I get into more details on Platinum, I want to provide some context. We are fortunate to have a global premium customer base that is unmatched in the industry. And our goal is to provide our customers with the best experience in the industry, but continually investing in innovating our value propositions. The recent Platinum launch is yet another example of our proven strategy of refreshing our products on a regular basis to drive customer engagement and growth. In fact, we've done over 200 refreshes across our portfolio globally since 2019, and this is the third U.S. Platinum refresh we've done in the past decade. Our refresh strategy leverages and strengthens the competitive advantages of our membership model. It starts with understanding what our customers and our prospective customers want, and then enhancing our value propositions with access to compelling benefits, services, and experiences at a price point that delivers outstanding value. The scale of our premium customer base gives us a distinct advantage. Our consumer and business platinum card franchise alone accounts for approximately $530 billion of annual spend globally. This scale gives us deep insights into customer spending patterns and emerging trends. which informs our product enhancements and where we invest. Another key advantage is the relationships we have with 160 million merchants around the world who accept our cards. We've grown the number of Amex accepting merchants by nearly five times since 2017, giving our card members more places to use their cards and giving more merchants access to our high spending customers. who spend on average nearly three times more annually on American Express cards than the average spend per card on other networks. Ultimately, product refreshes fuel a virtuous cycle of growth for the company. By continually enhancing our offerings, we drive the engagement and scale of our premium customer base. Our high-spending card members attract a growing number of world-class merchant partners who add more value to membership which drives more engagement. And this enables us to generate more dollars that we can reinvest in enhancing our products. The result of all this is a loyal and growing premium customer base, mutually beneficial relationships with our merchants, and strong returns for our shareholders, including higher revenue growth, excellent credit quality, expense leverage, and increased profit across our product portfolios. There's no better example of how we execute this strategy in our platinum cards. We launched our first platinum card over 40 years ago. It was the first premium card of its kind in the industry and remains the category leader. Platinum was initially designed for well-established, affluent, frequent travelers. Several years ago, we made a conscious decision to widen our aperture for our premium products so that we could also attract new generations to the franchise and grow with them as their needs change. With the value enhancements we've made over the past decade, the Platinum Card has evolved into the leading premium lifestyle card that it is today, with a wider range of benefits and experiences that appeal broadly across generations, including millennial and Gen Z consumers who are very comfortable paying for its exceptional value and are highly engaged in the product. A good example of these value enhancements is the previous U.S. Platinum Refresh we did in 2021 coming out of the COVID pandemic. We learned that our card members, particularly the younger cohorts, love the benefits we've added in categories like digital entertainment, wellness, and delivery services, in addition to our travel offerings, which we also continue to enrich with investments in new Centurion lounges and the expansion of our hotel programs. That brings me to our most recent Platinum launch. Here again, we continued our strategy of enhancing the card's benefits and services with more world-class partners across the areas we know our customers love to deliver industry-leading value that far exceeds the card's annual fee. In addition, we continued to enhance our award-winning digital capabilities, introducing a new app experience for our U.S. Platinum members that makes it even easier to engage with the card's benefits. As I mentioned earlier, the initial results are very strong, exceeding our expectations. For example, new Platinum account acquisitions are running at twice the level before the refresh. In the first three weeks, we saw very strong engagement in the new benefits and over 500,000 requests for the new MiraCard. And while the annual fee increase won't go into effect for a few months, retention rates have been stable post-refresh. In addition to these results, we saw record bookings through Amex Travel following the Platinum Refresh and the launch of our new all-in-one travel app, which we introduced earlier in September in the US. Looking ahead, I'm confident about our ability to sustain our growth by continuing to build on our powerful membership platform with a growing set of high-value products, benefits, services, and experiences. We'll also continue expanding our digital capabilities for consumers and businesses, including the upcoming integration of Center's expense management solution for commercial customers. And we'll focus on continuing to grow merchant coverage outside the U.S. to give card members more places to use their Amex cards. I'll hand it over to Christoph to walk through more detail on third quarter results.